That has to be the takeaway from the meeting of conservative journalists with the president, recorded by Byron York.
The latest plan to retake the offensive on defining victory is the so-called benchmark. “The idea is to develop with the Iraqi government a series of benchmarks -- oil, federalism, constitutional reform, there’s like 20 different things -- and have that developed in a way that they’re comfortable with and we’re comfortable with,” Bush said. Progress toward those goals would give the administration new ways to point toward overall progress in Iraq.
But this is bureaucratic number-crunching. The question really is: What do we want out of our Iraq venture? Is it democracy in Iraq? Is it Peace in the Middle East? Is it containing Iran?
Or, to put it bluntly, how do we define Winning in Iraq? Right now it looks like it is nothing more than standing up the puppet regime we installed. But do we really care about that? How bad would it be if the warlord Muqtada Al Sadr took over? Ralph Peters thinks that the current Iraqi government is already truckling to Al Sadr.
And that leads to a bigger question? How does each—or any—nation (for want of a better word) advance into the modern culture of capitalism, markets, and democratic rule? One thing is for sure. It ain’t easy.
In the nineteenth century, the European nations engaged in a Race for Africa, tore up its traditional boundaries, imposed western rule, and then withdrew it. The result, as we know, was misery and genocide.
Why should things be any different in the Islamic Middle East?
No comments:
Post a Comment